Tehri Lake

Tehri Lake is the reservoir behind the Tehri dam, and it is the only thing within reach of this ridge that is genuinely large. After three days of deodar and valley, the scale of it is the point.

What it looks like

Enormous, and startlingly blue on a clear day — a colour that looks wrong in photographs and is not. It sits among bare, steep hills rather than forest, so it reads as a completely different landscape from the one you drove through to get there, which is a strange and rather good thing to happen in the middle of a hill trip.

What there is to do

It is set up for boating and water sports, which is unusual for this part of Uttarakhand and is most of the reason people make the drive. If you have children who have spent two days being told to look at a view, this is the day that redeems the trip.

The honest caveat

It is a full day rather than a half, and it is a long drive. That is the single most useful thing we can tell you about it. People try to fit Tehri Lake into an afternoon alongside something else, and it does not fit — you end up doing the drive twice to spend an hour at the water.

So: go on a day you have set aside for it, leave early, and do not plan anything for the evening. On a two-night trip that is an awkward amount of your holiday, which is why our two-day itinerary puts it in the “only if you are staying a third night” column and means it.

Getting there from here

You carry on past Dhanaulti rather than turning back towards Mussoorie. It is the same direction as Kanatal, and it is the road that eventually takes you down towards Chamba — the route described on how to reach us as Route B, driven backwards. Ask us the night before and we will tell you what the road is doing.